Monday, February 8, 2010 Booster Gold appeared briefly on the Cartoon Network's Batman: The Brave and the Bold last Friday as the unwitting contestant in "Riddle Me This?", a mock television game show masquerading for the Riddler's latest death trap for Batman. The episode, "A Bat Divided!" was amusing throughout despite the brief screen time of the Corporate Crusader. Of particular amusement was the Riddler's silencing of Skeets through the clever application of a simple cloth gag. That's good television. Comments (0) | Add a Comment
Friday, February 5, 2010 Today's graph compresses the timeline of yesterday's graph to compare apples to apples: issue by issue of Comicchron.com sales numbers for recently canceled DC titles. The trend becomes pretty obvious here as ballooning early enthusiasm quickly deflates to a sloping plateau before finally petering out altogether. Note the recurring late series crossover spikes as Blue Beetle #20 is a Sinestro Corps crossover and both Manhunter #13 and 26 got boosts from Infinite Crisis-related stories. I wonder how big those spikes would have been if little plastic rings had been involved?
DC's sales cancellation threshold, while dependent on editorial discretion, is approximately 15,000 units. That's the white line in the graph above. Unless "Blackest Night" or the arrival of Keith Giffen can earn Booster Gold some new regular readers, it looks like the series will be targeted for termination by issue 50. I find that unacceptable. So spread the word, Boosterphiles, and lets see if we can't get some more air under Booster's sails. Comments (3) | Add a Comment
KMD Posted on Feb. 7, 2010 at 03:26:41 PM Hopefully JL: Generation Lost can increase sales. We'll see. I am not optimistic though things could change if the "Blue Beetle" co feature is pulled and the price per issue goes back down.
Harry Posted on Feb. 8, 2010 at 05:42:53 PM Booster will need continual event press to keep sales above the kill line. Its the nature of being a lesser known property. A big name on the new creative team, a featured spot in the bi-weekly series, the return of Ted Kord all seem to be DC's attempt to keep this title alive. That bodes well. Still, as big of a fan as I am, a 50 issue run just may be all the milage there is. Any idea how the collected editions are doing?
Boosterrific Posted on Feb. 9, 2010 at 12:09:49 AM [Official Comment]: KMD: One of the things I discovered in the stats is that the price change did not appear to in any way significantly affect the rate of decline of sales. While I hear that the Beetle co-feature is being canceled, I don't expect that if the price does fall back to $2.99, the change alone will make much of a change in the sales figures.
Harry: The TPB sales, like the individual comic book issues, are sliding, at least so far as direct sales reports are concerned. It is hard to get a grasp on the trade numbers, as distributors don't report sales numbers, and comichron.com only tracks the top 300 sellers each month. For example, Booster's softcover trades have sold approx 1700, 1500, and 1400, each in their opening month of sales.
